1 Voices are linked to ‘inner speech’
Scientists have proposed many different causes and explanations for voice-hearing. These explanations aren’t in any particular order, they don’t exclude each other, and they all have pros and cons. Most of us talk to ourselves in our heads. For example, you might say to yourself ‘Remember to buy milk’ while heading out in the morning.
This is called inner speech and some scientists think it is linked to voice-hearing. The theory says that a person hears a voice when they have actually talked to themselves in inner speech, but for some reason don’t recognize these thoughts as their own. The result is that a bit of inner speech that was actually produced by you becomes attributed to another person or voice. Some types of voices are best understood as having their roots in memories of traumatic life experiences, particularly those that occur in childhood.
Some people report voices and other unusual experiences that are like ‘flash backs’ or memories that directly replay or echo the traumatic event. For others, the link is more complicated. For example, a survivor of childhood abuse struggling with shame and other negative feelings might hear the voice of their abuser telling them they are worthless or commanding them to do dangerous or unacceptable things.
2 Voices are responses to trauma
If voices are inner speech, why do people not recognise them as their own?
• Sometimes a person’s inner speech doesn’t sound like them. When this occurs, it is easier to understand how it could be experienced as coming from somewhere else.
• Stress or strain. Sleep deprivation, drugs or alcohol, or major life stresses can make it easier to make thinking errors.
• Inner speech can be intrusive. When thoughts just ‘pop into our heads’, they are more likely to be attributed to someone else.
• Unacceptable ideas. Sometimes people find the content of their thoughts so unacceptable that they are sure that they are ‘not me’. Support for the inner speech theory:
• Brain scanning studies have shown that voice-hearing, including talking to ourselves in our heads, activates the same part of the brain we use for speaking.
• Muscles around the mouth have been found to move when a person is hearing voices.
This also happens when a person is doing inner speech. “I thought I was bad because the voices called me all sorts of names. Later I realized that the voices were related to the physical abuse because they have the characteristics of those that abused me”. Individuals with a history of childhood trauma, including neglect, bullying, physical, sexual and emotional abuse, are approximately 3 times more likely to develop psychosis.
Did you know? Some scientists now think of the brain as a ‘prediction machine’ whose main job is not to process information coming from outside, but instead to predict what is happening in the world and adjust those predictions on the basis of new information. The theory holds that usually there is often too much information for the brain to take in, so we take a shortcuts or ‘fill in the gaps’. How we fill in the gaps might be based on past experiences and what we have learned to expect about the world. This means that if you get used to there being particular threats around you – e.g. snide comments, whispers, or outright abuse – your brains might start ‘filling in the gaps’ with those expectations. In some cases, this might lead to hearing unpleasant voices; in others, it could result in seeing a dark shadow, or feeling like someone is touching or pushing you.
Voices-hearing is also linked to lots of everyday stresses and strains. These include money worries, access to school and work, and community problems. Recent research in London found that poverty and deprivation can increase a person’s risk of developing psychosis, as can living in a city as opposed to a rural area. Inequality is also a contributing factor.
3 Social and environmental factors play a role
Brain scanning studies (using a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI) reveal that a few specific areas of the brain seem to be more active than others when someone is hearing a voice. These include: What’s happening
4 People from minority ethnic groups living in the UK are much more likely than white British people to be diagnosed with psychosis or schizophrenia.
Social exclusion, discrimination, everyday and institutional racism all contribute to the problem. Broca’s area Involved in speech production and talking to yourself in your head (i.e. inner speech) Wernicke’s area Important in understanding speech The temporoparietal junction (TPJ) Used for integrating the senses and body signals and having a feeling of agency over selfproduced actrions The primary auditory cortex Sometimes but not always activated when people hear voices 4.6 times MORE likely Black Caribbean 4.1 times MORE likely 2.3 times MORE likely Black African Pakistani
(Ben Alderson-Day and Charles Fernyhough (2015). Inner speech: Development, cognitive functions, phenomenology, and neurobiology.Psychological Bulletin, 141(5), 931-965. doi: 10.1037/bul0000021. Alderson-Day et al (2016). The brain’s conversation with itself: Neural substrates of dialogic inner speech. Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, Vol. 11, Issue 1. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsv094. Varese et al (2012). Childhood adversities increase the risk of psychosis: a meta-analysis of patient-control, prospective- and cross-sectional cohort studies. Schizophrenia bulletin, Vol. 38, Issue 4, 661-71. doi: 10.1093/schbul/sbs050. Kirkbride et al (2017). Ethnic Minority Status, Age-at-Immigration and Psychosis Ris)
SOURCE:
https://understandingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/wdphv.pdf(accessed 31.10.19)
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